Through Al-Saa’i’s swervy, granular latticeworksI see the world of the Shah-nameh. Transport to rocksblushing with vegetation, peonies swellingwith crimson joy, leafless twigs seething with bio-remorse,the oyster-fresh eyes of rocks, rockspecking their way out of their shells—then I return to Al-Saa’i’s calligraphic airsin which light can be sensed praying, I enter its minty densities, its reptilinear interlocking sway,its alpha radiant omega drone. I witness the caravan departure ofa great octopus rising from the waves,transforming the tentacle water shudder intoa lacework of letter flavor cometary clover!

Pause

I hear you close the bathroom door.

An absence weighted balance lifts into presence.

Is the source of human bondage the fear of loss?

Now that you are showering, cables of water convert, ghost-loaded suds, Rabelais’ mane furls from Aphrodite’s thigh…

The patter of my tattered tale, swirled drain. Rising like a sewer of precognition: Is the real death the death I am preoccupied with here and now?

The sound of drying, the clay in the cloth, the veil that will reach me before I reach the end.

To accept loss as it looms larger, to pull out the last part of myself left inside, to get all of myself born.

Thoughts of Gorky, Looking into Vermont Woods, at Tinling’s, October 3, 2004

One stands on a creaking,October leaves like cobra hoodswaltzing, wattled parasols..

My eyes focus latrines—a putrification is under way.

Warm bath of heart re-obtained.To inhale, to be in the columnar density of a warming that now takes on global contours.

Leaves as reefsbirch-white with amber pink lime-tinted Atlas still the molten under-yolk,the sphincter of mayhemGorky breathed in, staring at gnats adrift,grass entanglements, entryan ever-exiting bruise, burstflagellation of a pyredrummed on by antspossessed in elfin serenade.

Cockscomb and marigold are thistled ina graphite legacyrecalling Crane at Melville’s grave.Monody of a linepicked up at Pech Merle.The supped russet totalityeye-needled through.